


The Hunt

by tei



Series: Vampire John [1]
Category: Sherlock (TV), Sherlock Holmes & Related Fandoms
Genre: Alternate Universe - Vampire, Dark John, M/M, Vampire John, Vampire John Watson, Vampire Sex
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-08-13
Updated: 2018-08-13
Packaged: 2019-06-27 00:32:54
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,993
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/15674421
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/tei/pseuds/tei
Summary: “Jesus, Sherlock.” John rubbed at his face, momentarily beaten down by his flatmate’s persistence. “You really want this, don’t you? Not just the bite. The whole vampire thing.”"Obvious."





	The Hunt

**Author's Note:**

  * For [reveriebridge](https://archiveofourown.org/users/reveriebridge/gifts).



> So I wrote some vampire Sherlock a while back, and reveriebridge suggested, very persuasively, that vampire John was also worthy of exploration. So, here he is! Warning for... well, all the usual vampire stuff, I suppose. Vamp John has eaten many people. 
> 
> The image of vampires hunting consequence-free in clubs in the 70s, as well as the effect of a vampire bite, is mostly owed to [Sigyn's brilliant instant classic, _Pet_](https://archiveofourown.org/works/4973713?view_full_work=true%22). If you like vampires and biting and shit, and are even vaguely aware of the Buffy canon, go read that fic. 
> 
> Thanks [scribblesandscreeds](https://archiveofourown.org/users/scribblesandscreeds/) for the beta!

Sherlock Holmes had never truly, deeply wanted anything that John had not eventually given him. And John was beginning to understand that this was not going to be an exception.

It had been only a few weeks after he'd moved in that Sherlock had figured it out. John had underestimated him, clearly, if he had thought that Sherlock’s adamant denial of the paranormal as an explanation for anything was going to prevent him from correctly deducing that John was a vampire. And once Sherlock had gotten over the shock of his own correctness on the matter, and adjusted his view of the world accordingly over the course of one marathon mind-palace excursion that had left both John and Mrs. Hudson tiptoeing and whispering at each other around the flat, he was quite accepting.

Well, maybe _accepting_ wasn’t quite the word.

Sherlock had launched a campaign, over the course of months, to learn everything there was to know about vampires in general, and John in particular. He had visited libraries and out-of-the-way occult shops. He had sketched out, with his reluctant help, John’s entire sire lineage going back to the tenth century. He had insisted on poring over every photograph John owned of himself, the ones he stored in a shoebox and had never shown to anyone: John as a young man, standing proudly in the sunlight in his new uniform at the opening of the Great War. John several years later, gaunter but curiously well-preserved compared to the family members surrounding him. John in Vietnam, John in New York, John in Siberia-- Sherlock teased out every story he could of his flatmate’s many extraordinary lives.

And, of course-- well. Sherlock didn’t just want data from the past.

Sherlock wanted an _experiment._ And he was not going to rest until he got one.

The blood tests were his latest offensive. Sherlock was sitting in the kitchen in front of a fucking _tabletop centrifuge_ that he had managed to convince someone at Bart’s to lend him. John had pointedly not asked what he was trying to do, but whatever it was apparently required blood. And he was pricking his finger over. And over. And over again.

John wasn’t even hungry, was the thing. If he were, there were plenty of bags of blood in the freezer, and he could have gone down to the friendly butcher a few blocks over if he’d wanted to eat without entering the kitchen. But all he wanted was a cup of tea. Everybody wants a cup of tea sometimes, even if they don’t strictly need human nutrition to survive. But as soon as he entered the kitchen to put the kettle on, he was assaulted by the smell of blood so thick in the air it seemed to take up residence in his limbs, forcing his body to turn towards the aroma.

Sherlock ignored him pointedly, staring through a microscope. But his eyes were unfocused and his breathing curiously shallow.

John was too distracted to try to pretend it wasn’t getting to him. “You’re doing that on purpose,” he said, gritting his teeth.

“Mmhmm,” rumbled Sherlock. He didn’t take his eyes away from the microscope. “Is it working?”

He was obviously trying not to get his hopes up. He had asked for this before, and John had refused. This time, though...

“Jesus, Sherlock.” John rubbed at his face, momentarily beaten down by his flatmate’s persistence. “You really want this, don’t you? Not just the bite. The whole vampire thing.”

Sherlock leaned back in his chair, pulling his arms behind him in a way that was somewhere in between aggressively casual and aggressively seductive. He glared at John through the slits of his half-closed eyes. “Obvious.”

 _Fine,_ thought John. And that was that.

His fangs slid out from between his human teeth, sleek and deadly and letting them loose felt like the first breath of spring air on your face. Well, like that had felt back when he’d been able to enjoy such things.

Sherlock went very still. Then he stood up, looking like he wasn’t quite sure where he wanted to be. He started drifting towards a wall, eyes trained sharply on John.

“It’s wasn’t always like this, you know,” John commented casually. “There are lots of us now— fundamentally decent blokes, like a good drink but would rather not kill for it if we don’t have to. Free market finally clued in, and now you can get good stuff from the back of any butcher shop. Apparently there’s even someone trying to get one of those bike-delivery apps up and running. Just punch in what you want, and your pig or cow or whatever other kind of blood you fancy will be on its way to you. There’ll be a surcharge for human, of course, but even that’s mostly acquired by legal means. But it didn’t used to be that way.”

John was circling around the little kitchen as he spoke, casually inspecting the clutter of Sherlock’s most recent experiment. He started drifting slightly towards where his flatmate was now standing up against the wall, eyes big as saucers. Sherlock knew about how John stayed fed, of course. But he rarely talked about the more unsavoury elements of his past.

“Time was,” he continued, dropping the pitch of his voice a little. “there was no alternative to hunting. Didn’t even occur to us, to be honest. No, when you were hungry, you got fresh blood straight from the source.”

Sherlock tried to speak, but the words caught in his throat. He coughed a little and then whispered, “Hunting… where?”

“Clubs, mostly,” said John. He was standing directly in front of Sherlock now, shoulders pulled up with military bearing, somehow towering over his friend despite technically being shorter. “Oh, the seventies were great for that. Dark, loud music, young punks out of their minds on cheap highs… you could feed right in the middle of the dance floor and nobody would notice or care.”

John watched, enraptured, as Sherlock’s lips parted in a small gasp. Oh yes, he was feeling this. “Right… out in the open?” he asked.

John shrugged. “If you liked that sort of thing,” he said. “Personally… I always liked to take mine out back.” He took a very deliberate step forward, until his right foot was in between Sherlock’s knees. He allowed himself a moment of indulgence, leaning in to breathe Sherlock’s scent. He smelled bright and clean and delicious, and John imagined that when he finally sipped his blood it would burst over his tongue like champagne.

“Back alley,” he murmured. “Some bright young thing, just high enough to have turned off his good sense. I’ve been watching his hips all night, thinking about my prick pressing into him while I choose just the right spot to sink my fangs into that gorgeous long neck.” He trailed his fingertip down Sherlock’s throat at that, from right beneath his chin to the hollow at the top of his chest.

Sherlock shivered. “How would you choose them? There must have been plenty of options.”

“You’re forgetting I’ve been in the Army during three separate time periods,” Jonn answered softly. “I know how to size up a young man. I’ve seen it all, and I know what I like.” He raised his hands and placed a his palms on the outside of Sherlock’s biceps, then began slowly running his hands down Sherlock’s body, dipping under his arms to feel the sides of his lean torso. Halfway between a caress and evaluating a piece of meat.

“Someone with a good sense of himself. Thinks he knows who is is already; thinks he knows what he wants. Sharp and keen.” His hands travelled lower, squeezing Sherlock’s arse.

“But underneath it all,” John whispered, “He’s got secrets. Desires he’s never told anybody about. Maybe that he can’t even figure out himself. He needs someone to pull them out of him. He just needs some firm guidance… a strong hand leading him out of the club by the back of his neck, a rough shove up against the filthy wall of the alley.” With that, he removed his hands from Sherlock’s arse and slammed them against the wall, wide enough that his chest came forward to make contact with Sherlock’s and pin him to the wall.

His mouth was very close to Sherlock’s neck now, which was not lost on Sherlock. The top of his head banged against the wall as he tipped it back to bare his throat fully. “ _John._ God.”

John raised his head so his face was directly in front of Sherlock’s. “I’d start just with this. Don’t want to spook him too early.” His voice was dangerous, but there was a strange sparkle of merriment in his eyes when he gently took Sherlock’s head in his hands and turned it to give him a chaste kiss just at the corner of his eye.

“There will be plenty of time for him to feel fear and pain later,” said John, continuing to gently kiss at various places around Sherlock’s face. Finally he started making his way towards his mouth, letting the fangs show a little bit more and his tongue darting out of his mouth to taste Sherlock’s skin. “Although of course, by the time I’m getting ready to bleed him dry, it’ll be nothing of the sort. He’ll be writhing and begging for me to bite him again, to drink deeper… to take everything there is of him.” Finally, finally, his mouth reached Sherlock’s, and started kissing him gently, making sure not to break the skin with his fangs.

“A vampire’s bite is a heady thing,” he murmured into his mouth. “It makes victims want it, more than anything else in the world. I used to feel sorrier for the ones I didn’t kill than the ones I did. At least the dead ones weren’t left desperate.” John pulled back from the kiss, and his questioning expression broke his character for a moment. He raised his eyebrows, to ask _are you sure this is what you want, Sherlock?_

Sherlock just moaned and started scrabbling at John’s belt.

John leaned back slightly, giving him access, allowing Sherlock to slide his trousers and pants down. “I used to love when they wanted it,” he hissed. “When they’d beg to suck me off, get me nice and wet to slide inside them. Lambs leading themselves willingly to the slaughter. Gorgeous.” He pushed on Sherlock’s shoulders and Sherlock didn’t need any further encouragement to act out exactly what John was describing. His knees hit the floor with a thud that surely would leave bruises, but he just grabbed on to the backs of John’s thighs and swallowed his cock as deep as he could take it. And Sherlock was _very_ good at this.

John let himself bask in it for a moment, luxuriating in the feeling of his gorgeous, strange boyfriend sucking him off. He took the opportunity to remove his shirt, wanting as little as possible in between him and Sherlock. But it wasn’t long before the smell of blood started tapping insistently at the inside of his mind again, and he knew he didn’t want to stay like this for too long. He ran his fingers into Sherlock’s hair and pushed him slightly, forcing him to take even more of John’s cock, as he said, “Get it good and wet now, boy. It’s the only lube you’ll be getting.”

Sherlock redoubled his efforts, licking obscene amounts of saliva over John’s cock, and John could see the arousal in his eyes. Sherlock loved this, he knew; he loved it when John took him fast and hard and unprepared. Still, John didn’t want to genuinely injure him, so fulfilling that desire of Sherlock’s was mostly an exercise in making Sherlock feel like he was less prepared than he really was.

John pulled him up by the hair and immediately unbuttoned his shirt and yanked his trousers and pants down and off. Before Sherlock had a chance to recover his balance, John pushed him back against the wall with his chest hard enough that Sherlock grunted in surprise and pain; but when John placed his hands on the bottom of Sherlock’s thighs, he readily lifted his feet off the ground to wrap his legs around John’s waist. He immediately started trying to rut against John, desperately seeking friction against his cock.

John slapped his right thigh, hard. “None of that,” he said. “You’ll await _my_ pleasure. And I want to see what it is that I’ve caught first. Hold still.”

John lifted two fingers to his mouth and licked them. Almost as an afterthought, he bit down with the tip of a fang on the pad of his index finger, then used his tongue to coat the digits in blood. Sherlock’s eyes were unfocused, completely blissed out, but they followed John’s bloody fingers as they trailed down his chest, past his desperate cock and pushed into his arse. He moaned loudly the instant they pushed past his entrance, and John brought up his other hand to press hard over Sherlock’s mouth.

“Very nice,” he whispered, leaning in so his mouth was beside Sherlock’s ear. “I’m almost ready to have you now. Can you take it without crying out, now? Can do do that for me?”

If John was being honest, his desire for Sherlock to stay mostly quiet was only partly for the sake of the imagined club from whence he’d plucked Sherlock, and partly for the sake of poor Mrs. Hudson just a floor down. Still, he could read very clearly in Sherlock’s face and complete lack of a verbalized response that the answer was ‘no.’

“There, there,” he murmured, lining up his cock carefully with Sherlock’s entrance and removing the hand over his mouth to take hold of the back of his head. “This will hurt a bit. You just put your head here--” he guided Sherlock’s head to his own shoulder-- “and bite down if you need to.” Sherlock emitted a low, desperate groan, but quietly, and John felt his mouth open and his teeth rest lightly against his skin in readiness.

John gripped Sherlock’s hips hard enough to bruise and drove up into him, slowly but unrelentingly. He felt warmth and tightness around his cock and then the searing pain of Sherlock’s blunt, human teeth punching through the skin of his shoulder and _yes,_ god yes, that was what he wanted. For a vampire, the wires were always crossed between pleasure and pain, and of course John knew that he had always gotten off on a victim’s pain as much as he got off on the act of claiming them sexually. But to have a victim inflict pain on him-- that was something else. That was something new.

Sherlock was panting, his eyes wide as he realized the mess he had made of John’s shoulder, looking almost guilty as he pulled away with blood on his lips. Which was ludicrous, under the circumstances, and John decided to demonstrate just how ludicrous it was. He started thrusting up into him smoothly, and when Sherlock’s eyes closed and his mouth opened John caught his lips in a kiss with just a hint of fang and said, “You’re so good. So warm, so hard, so alive.”

John could smell everything: the sweat on Sherlock’s neck, the musk of his prick, his own blood in Sherlock’s arse. The smell of Sherlock’s blood was still wafting from the kitchen table, and Sherlock’s blood was thrumming away in his neck, and under the white scarred skin of his wrists, and on the inside of his thighs held tight against John’s hips. John could barely stand to smell all of that blood and not taste it; but only barely. He knew he could, he could stand it and not drink if he needed to-- but he didn’t need to. Sherlock wanted him to have this. Sherlock was taking John’s cock up his arse with a look on his face like he was seeing God, and Sherlock wanted every depraved part of John set loose on his own body, and John would have bled Sherlock dry just to have every part of this incredible man inside of him if it weren’t for the fact that John was very, very fond of him.

Sherlock was close to orgasm already, desperately trying to speed up the pace of John’s thrusts, and John forced himself to have one more stretch of patience as he started working Sherlock’s cock with his hand, letting the wall support the full weight of the man’s body. Finally, Sherlock was huffing out John’s name with every stroke and John could feel the tension gathering inside of him, and it was time.

He forced himself to stop thrusting entirely, holding completely still seated deep inside of Sherlock’s body. Sherlock whined in protest, but John just leaned forward to rest his forehead on Sherlock’s shoulder and whispered, “Ready?”

Sherlock answered only by leaning forward and putting his mouth back against where he had bitten down as John had entered him. John nearly laughed: Sherlock thought this was going to _hurt._ Oh, that was adorable.

He could make it hurt, of course, if he wanted to. And a younger and less experienced vampire probably wouldn’t be able to help hurting a victim with a bit. But John had drank his fill of Sherlock’s pain, and had something rather better in mind.

He slid his fangs in gently, holding Sherlock absolutely still. The instant they pierced the skin, his tongue was swirling around the puncture, soothing the the pinpoint of pain and introducing, John knew, desire and contentment in equal measure, so intense that a vampire’s victim would gladly die twice in the arms of their attacker. That was the terrible beauty of it, and why John had held off for so long in doing this to Sherlock. But he could deny him nothing. He started drinking, taking long pulls of Sherlock’s blood and nearly dropped Sherlock when the taste washed over him. It was everything he had ever wanted, the distilled essence of his love and desire. It made him feel reckless and crazy but he held back, knowing Sherlock needed to him to control himself right now. Neither of them could ever finish an encounter like this by having everything they desired.

Sherlock went absolutely boneless the instant the effect hit him, slumping back against the wall in complete and blissful surrender. John drove into him from below and took his blood from above and Sherlock was beyond words, beyond expression, so far gone that when John felt the warmth of Sherlock coming against his belly it hardly altered the desire on his face. Sherlock was beyond purely sexual desire now; he wanted to be devoured.

The euphoria on Sherlock’s face was almost disturbing, and it took John a moment to figure out why: it was the exact look that Sherlock wore when he was slipping a needle into his arm. John knew-- and had known from the instant he decided to give this to his friend-- that Sherlock would probably be begging him for it for the rest of his life. John would have to be cautious-- the back of his mind was already whirring with calculations about how much blood a man Sherlock’s age and size could afford to lose on how regular a basis, and anticipating glowingly the idea that perhaps the necessity of keeping his strength up for a bite would be the thing that would finally convince Sherlock to eat enough on a regular basis.

John kept driving up into him, allowing himself not to mind that Sherlock was surely oversensitive and aching, until he felt his orgasm gathering and momentarily stopped sipping at Sherlock’s blood to concentrate on the feeling of spilling himself into Sherlock.

Sherlock hadn’t seemed to mind being taken even when oversensitive, but the pause in the bite caused him to whimper a little in protest. “More,” he whispered hoarsely, and John groaned. He wanted to, of course he did-- both for his own sake and because he wanted to give Sherlock absolutely everything the man wanted. But he had always known that biting Sherlock would have to end in denying him; the only thing Sherlock wanted right now was for the bite to never end.

He mouthed at the bite mark, lapping up just a little bit more of the sweet and heady wine. Then he reluctantly pulled back, restraining himself to licking over the pinpricks as the flow of blood slowed and then stopped. He slid his softening cock out of Sherlock and brought him carefully down to the floor, pulling him close and wrapping his arms around him.

“No,” Sherlock moaned. He tried desperately to pull John’s head back against his shoulder, and John let himself be guided but continued only licking gently at the wound.

“Shhh,” he whispered. “I can’t take any more, my love. You need to keep the rest.” He felt Sherlock’s shoulders start to shake and realized he was literally sobbing with need and _god_ this was hard, he had always know it would have to end like this but he hadn’t anticipated just how painful it would be to see the creature he loved most in the world be utterly consumed by the desire for John to kill him.

It would subside after about a quarter of an hour; until then, John wanted to stay as close to Sherlock as he possibly could. He briefly considered bringing them to the bed, but Sherlock was too far gone to notice or care whether he was lying on the floor or on a mattress, so instead John just lay them both down and arranged himself so he could press his belly against Sherlock’s back and wind his arms around him tightly, just this side of painfully, letting Sherlock know that he was wanted and claimed.

Slowly, Sherlock’s shaking subsided and his breathing evened. John was caressing gently up and down his chest, marveling that he got to have this. The decades of his life that he had spent feeding off of punks in clubs, he had accepted the idea that he would never feel human warmth again without snuffing it out. It had seemed like a fair trade; he got to feel the thrill of taking the spark of life and draining it entirely into his own body. What were human ideas of comfort and love compared to that?

But now, Sherlock. And Sherlock could give him both, and wanted all of John: the monster and the man. He could feed from Sherlock, and he could comfort him. As Sherlock’s tears dried on his face, John felt his own eyes dampen. “I love you,” he whispered, unable to express anything more complex than just that, the truth. “I love you, I love you, I love you…”

  
Sherlock wriggled, burrowing backwards ever further into the curve of John’s body. When he spoke, his voice was hoarse. “John?”

“Mmm?”

“Could we…” he cleared his throat nervously. “Were you okay with that? Could we do it again sometime?”

John chuckled. “Okay with it,” he said. “Yes, love, I was okay with it. Very okay. And we can do it again.” He had been pondering the terms he should offer, and decided to try his luck. “Once a month,” he decided. “And only if you eat at least two thousand calories a day for the four days before and after.”

“Three days,” Sherlock tried to negotiate.

John pressed his lips to Sherlock’s ear and growled, the guttural otherworldly one that no one who wasn’t about to die had ever heard him make before that day.

Sherlock shivered. “Four,” he agreed quickly. Trying to regain some of his composure, he added haughtily, “I look forward to it.”

John pulled him closer and smiled. “As do I.”


End file.
